We were all bored out of our minds and started chatting idly on the side, and of course the topic was the headquarters we were about to reach.
Shen Feng, Xu Shu, Yangyang, Chen Pu, Jun Di, Uncle Gazi, Taozi, Zhou Wen, the two children, and the rest of us—our little internal group sat together in a circle, talking enthusiastically.
Taozi and Han Xue held beautiful expectations for the headquarters.
Their hopes were simple: as long as it was like the valley—electricity, hot water, clean rooms, and beds—then it would basically be heaven.
Jun Di, Shen Feng, and Xu Shu still held their previous attitude, looking toward the headquarters with pessimism.
After traveling for so long, having witnessed all sorts of twisted people and twisted events, they no longer held any optimism toward any so-called large and safe settlement.
Uncle Gazi didn’t express much of an opinion.
After living so many years, you stop saying things out loud, but deep down he probably still hoped for a place to settle down.
As for me… honestly, I wasn’t even sure what kind of attitude I had.
But as things stood, it was inevitable that we would be moving into that headquarters sooner or later.
And regardless of our feelings, after walking this long, our minds were full of wounds; our thoughts needed a physically safe environment to settle and recover.
Besides, getting into that headquarters might even depend on whether they respected Suo Tian and his men.
It wasn’t like we had any right to pick and choose.
After everyone finished the last bit of food and rested briefly, we hit the road again.
This time we were heading straight to our destination, and wouldn’t be stopping on the way.
Now everyone in the car was wide awake, no longer dozing off like the past two days.
Everyone stared out the windows, waiting for the moment we finally arrived at headquarters.
I also began observing the scenery more seriously.
Unknowingly, it seemed our convoy had already moved out of the large mountain ranges we’d been traveling through.
Though there were still mountains on both sides of the road, compared to the vast and towering ranges before, the ones in the distance were more like small hills.
Some of these small hills even had houses built on them.
After staring for a while, I turned and asked Suo Tian, who was driving, “Are we heading toward the city area now?”
Suo Tian nodded slightly.
“Are we going to pass through the city? Will there be walkers?”
At that, Suo Tian glanced at me. “We don’t need to pass through the city.”
“We’re going around it?” No sooner had I asked than the car slammed into a few walkers wandering across the road.
The speed was high, and the hit made the entire car shake.
One of them even landed on the hood, clawing toward us with its mouth wide open, crawling almost all the way up to the windshield until Suo Tian swung the car sharply and flung it off.
Xiao Hu, who I was holding, saw the whole thing directly.
He had still been half-asleep just a moment ago, but now his lips trembled, and he burst out crying.
And once he cried, Tingyun behind us puckered her lips and began crying as well.
Instantly the car was filled with the ear-splitting wails of two children.
The rest of us—Uncle Gazi, Lili, and I—could only desperately try to soothe them.
Kids at their age could be as mature as little adults when they weren’t crying, but once they started, they shook heaven and earth.
You had to distract them somehow, or there was no hope.
After a long struggle, the two finally cried themselves tired and went quiet, and we were able to breathe again.
The car drove for another hour or so when suddenly Suo Tian slowed down and flashed the headlights a few times, signaling the cars behind us.
I was puzzled until he nodded forward with his chin. “We’re almost there.”
I instantly sat upright, following his gaze.
In the distance ahead on the road, a few tall buildings had begun to faintly appear in sight.
They were still too far to see clearly—beyond knowing they were very tall.
But from this first impression, they looked somewhat like the previous shelter we’d seen.
The convoy continued moving forward at a very slow speed.
As we gradually drew closer, I stared wide-eyed at the scene before us.
Only now did I realize how laughable it had been to compare the headquarters to that tiny shelter earlier.
From afar, we could already see an enormous wall stretching outward on both sides—at least over a dozen kilometers long.
This wall was much taller than the one around the shelter we’d seen before.
Directly facing the road stood a massive iron gate.
This gate was nothing like the previous one—it was obviously much more modern.
There were no locks or mechanisms visible on the outside, and the height was nearly level with the wall itself.
Its entire structure was huge and imposing, giving off a majestic, indescribably overwhelming aura.
It looked absolutely magnificent.
But that wasn’t even the most astonishing part.
Along the top of the wall, extending into the distance, every few meters sat a dark, gaping cannon muzzle.
Behind each one stood a completely motionless figure.
Even though we were still far away and they were no bigger than soybean-sized dots to our eyes, we could somehow feel a rigid, chilling presence radiating from them.
I took a sharp breath and scanned everything in front of me again.
The shock welled up in my chest.
This was practically an iron fortress!
Before we got any closer, I pointed at the wall and asked Suo Tian, “Is that… built in a full circle?”
Hearing me, he glanced at the wall and nodded. “Yes. The entire city is enclosed inside.”
“My god…”
Suddenly, my mind flashed with the image of the Berlin Wall that divided Germany during the Cold War.
When our convoy slowly drove to about a hundred meters from the massive gate, Suo Tian stopped the vehicle and said to us, “Get out. We’ll walk the rest.”
We had already been overwhelmed by the sight of the towering walls and the massive iron gate, so we obediently followed his instructions without saying a word.
The cars behind us also stopped one after another.
Wang Jun and his people came up as well.
After speaking quietly with Suo Tian for a moment, Big beard walked forward toward the gate with Suo Tian leading the way.
The rest of us—still shocked and even a bit nervous—looked around and then followed.
No one spoke.
The entire walk was silent except for the steady tapping of our shoes on the concrete.
Standing before that impenetrable wall, I finally felt it deep in my bones—human strength truly was powerful.
We were as small as ants in front of this gate and wall.
Humanity was far from being cornered or pushed to extinction.
A place like this… once inside, the walkers probably wouldn’t be able to break in no matter what happened.
Soon we were standing beneath the gate.
Following behind Suo Tian and the others, I tilted my head back to look up.
Roughly estimating the height… this gate had to be at least twenty meters tall.
A few seconds later, a slightly mechanical female voice sounded from the gate:
“Identity verification required. Please proceed with identity verification.”
The same sentence repeated several times before the voice went quiet again.
While we were craning our necks trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, Big beard had already raised his head and responded:
“Team C, mission complete.”
As he spoke, I noticed—thanks to my sharp eyes—two surveillance cameras placed in the upper corners of the towering gate.
Beneath each camera was a flat audio speaker.
The sound must have been coming from those.
“Identity verification required. Please proceed with identity verification.”
A few seconds after Big beard’s reply, the same message repeated.
We were still confused when he suddenly turned and shouted to us:
“Report your identities and your old ID numbers!”
All of us froze for a moment, not understanding why this was necessary.
But then Suo Tian turned to me and said, “Do as he says.”
I hesitated for a second, looking at him, then lifted my head and recited my ID number—haltingly, bit by bit.
Seeing this, Shen Feng and the others also began reporting their ID numbers one after another.
Soon, after all of us had finished, and before the broadcast spoke again, I pointed at Xiao Hu and Tingyun and said, “These two kids shouldn’t need to, right?”
The moment I finished speaking, that mechanical female voice sounded again: “Please enter one at a time.”
Right after that, with a loud rumble, the tightly shut gate slowly began to open automatically from the left side.
Big beard and his group immediately went inside.
The rest of us, unsure what to do, just stood there stiffly like a bunch of idiots.
Suo Tian came over and grabbed my hand.
His gaze was reassuring, and then he led me toward the slowly opening gate.
I turned around and called to the others, and only then did they snap out of it and follow along one by one.
When Wang Jun, who walked at the very back, finally entered, the gate once again began closing.
After stepping inside, we saw Big beard and the others standing a short distance away from the gate, lined up in a row.
A group of people in white lab coats and gas masks were scanning them up and down with various strange-looking devices, seemingly preparing to conduct some kind of examination.
I only recognized one of the devices.
It was quite advanced.
Years ago during the SARS outbreak, when two cases were reported in our county, I panicked and took Yangyang to my grandmother’s place in another city.
Back then, when we were riding the bus, a group of people in white lab coats stopped the vehicle at the highway exit.
They used a strangely shaped device to scan your forehead, and your temperature and other information would appear instantly on the screen.
It felt incredible at the time.
Behind the people in white coats stood a group of soldiers in dark green uniforms, armed and alert.
One man among them caught my attention — he had a crew cut and a very refined, scholarly appearance.
He seemed to be their leader.
What drew my attention wasn’t his looks or anything else, but the fact that ever since the moment we entered the gate, his gaze had repeatedly drifted toward Suo Tian.
While the people in front of us were being examined one by one, I turned my head and glanced at the surrounding wall again.
I suddenly realized that the wall was built much like an ancient city wall — with a staircase on the inside leading upward to a platform along the top.
To give an example, the upper part of the wall was structured very much like the Great Wall, except that it lacked the small watchtowers placed at intervals.
— The end of the Chapter–
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